No point emailing my MP….

Have written to my MP about three times since he took office and he doesn’t reply(Craig Whitaker, Conservative- They work for you!!!).

So I am writing to everyone else. I have turned into an organochav handwringing armchair activist….haha

I may start writing to Radio4 and The Times. Call myslef ‘Outraged of Hebden Bridge’..

Am really sorry.

Budget again. They are going to vote through a budget that quite literally rolls equality back? Seriously? They are actually going to do it. On the basis of research by a nutjob christian think tank, with as much credibility as the society for homeopathy?

WHo the fuck agreed to equality being rolled back to sort problems banking caused? How many bankers are women? Fuck right off. I do not bloody well think so.

This really is the ‘get women out of work’ budget.

My friend rang me. She is fairly unhappy. 5 years out of her CV won’t have that much of an effect…surely. Not in a labour market so heavily geared towards women with kids?

Imagine you have just had a baby. Your wife wants to go back to work. Childcare will be £6/700 a month. Your wife will earn £9500, because she is going part time. It takes you over the high earnings limit. You will be worse off if she goes back to work. So she doesn’t.

When does the high earnings level kick in?

What is it with marriage? My ex was great- but surely a universal assumption that all men should have their wives at home dependent on them is a bit dodgy?

Keeping people in marriages by keeping them at home, and dependent- that seems quite dangerous. Aren’t we against forcing people into relationships that may not be good for them?

I know this budget stuff might be getting a bit monotonous-but it’s having quite an effect round here. And blog reflects life. Promise it isn’t all whinging about benefits. Seriously though- WTF? Are we rolling back equality as well as the welfare state? Great. I thought we wanted women to work? Only the single ones?

Here’s hoping she can pick up those skills quickly if they ever split up.

Laurie Penny- The Tories’ attack on Independent Women.

Article by the very talented Laurie Penny- thank you for writing it missus.

Question.

In a global economy, you need a workforce who can be internationally mobile. Yet we want immigration caps.

In a country you need to encourage communities that bring sustainable growth and a future, and we think we need legislation to bring about domestic economic migration? How does that work?

My great gran used to travel to a house in London to work. She came home on holidays. She says she got about 5 days holiday a year- and it wasn’t enough time to get home. The good old days eh?

500 Faces of Hebden Bridge!

The website for 500 faces of Hebden Bridge is up. Hurrah, and well done to Jason Elliot for a fine fine commemoration of 500 years of this town!! He can go and watch the football now.

*I think I am on page 19 0r 20.

Why I rejoined the Labour Party…

… on Labourlist today.

I would like to know……

…how anyone gets anything done with a 3 year old running around. Seriously.  Especially when they are ‘helping’. God save me from ‘helping’…

Kate Williams finds pseudo democracy!

Kate Williams again(the one who would take most of the commas out of this blog) on her experience of ‘facing Nick and Dave’.

Pseudo engagement for pseudo democracy.

Food.

How does this happen? When Rachel was born, I breastfed her. Then I did the ‘baby led weaning'(which means doing nowt- giving them food to hold and seeing what they do with it…), she ate what I ate. She ate curries, soups, pies, stew, every vegetable imaginable. Her appetite was something to behold, and watching a 1 year old inhale more food than her dad, I thought I had cracked it.

I did that smug thing: when friends had kids who didn’t eat, I recited how my approach to diet meant that Rachel was not fussy, had a wide palette…uber mum.

So now I eat humble pie. My daughter has decided that she only eats weetabix, chocolate ice cream, and strawberries. Brocolli on occasion.

I have agonised, I have stressed at her, I have stressed at myself. I have been creative and imaginative.

I have now learned a valuable lesson.

NEVER look smugly at other parents who are having difficulty with something you think you have cracked. It will bite you in the bum and make you look a bit silly. And I will start buying bigger boxes of weetabix.

PS When I am boss of the world, weetabix are banned- or we will start using it instead of cement.